Russia's exit from European anti-torture treaty takes effect, ending detention visits

The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee will no longer be able to inspect places of detention in Russia. Its president says independent monitoring inside the country has now ended.

Russia's withdrawal from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture took effect on 1 November 2026. The anti-torture committee (CPT) of the Council of Europe, a European organisation of 46 member states based around human rights, will no longer visit detention places in the country. Its president, Alan Mitchell, said the withdrawal marks the end of any independent monitoring of places of deprivation of liberty inside Russia.

The committee has not visited Russia since the country's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian authorities refused it access. It still received numerous accounts of alleged torture and ill-treatment by Russian officials in occupied Ukrainian territories and within Russia. Russia, for its part, said it had been without representation on the committee since December 2023, because the Council of Europe blocked the election of a new member from Russia.

In September 2025, President Vladimir Putin signed a federal law denouncing the convention and its two protocols, numbered 1 and 2. By then, the committee had already spoken: on 18 November 2024 it issued a public statement concerning Russia. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said Russia's decision to leave the convention showed that Russia was a territory of lawlessness, where human life and dignity were worthless.

Ukraine continues to allow the committee to visit any place of detention on its territory at any time it chooses, and publishes the committee's reports automatically, the Council of Europe says. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation has said torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment are used as state sanctioned tools for systemic oppression in the Russian Federation. The EU said the primary victims of the withdrawal are and will be Russian citizens.

The CPT will continue its mandate in the 46 Council of Europe member states. The EU called the Russian decision one more step in the country's complete disengagement from its international commitments, and said it demonstrates Russia's disregard for the protection of human rights.